What to Do When Your Relationship Has Reached a Dead End

AVAlexander Volchek

You cannot be the one person endlessly trying to create and find some balance. The other person tells you, "I'm only interested in a professional relationship with you." He does not understand how the time he spends with you will affect the coming decades of his life. When another person says he does not want to work through the relationship, it means he is not interested in you. He takes so much of what little you have left that you simply do not have the strength for it. You say, "To hell with everyone! I'll think only about myself." The main question is: why don't you do it? Because you are afraid life will be hard without this person. People are constantly afraid of losing relationships with certain people. There are always people you find it difficult to be with; something is wrong, and something needs to be done about the relationship. Someone asked me a question today. He is here right now. I will discuss his question: what do you do with relationships that have reached a dead end? Every one of you has them. At the end of this video, I will give you the solution that offers the shortest possible path to resolving an issue in your relationship with anyone.

You are asking about the different kinds of relationship you have with your friend. On one hand, you live together; on the other, you work together. You also have mutual friends and acquaintances and spend leisure time together. Yet your friend tells you that your relationship is purely professional and nothing else is needed. You say, "How can it be professional? We live together." That is a very interesting question. I have told you many times that, for your own development, your family's development, your inner state and growth, I recommend living separately with your family, on your own without other people in the home. Why live on your own without other people? Because it is hard for you to pull yourself together and connect with yourself. It is hard to find balance within yourself, to find your inner backbone, what you truly need and truly want. You are constantly being thrown from side to side, from minus a hundred to plus a hundred. An enormous number of questions constantly trouble you. You are constantly in a state of worry, depression, suffering. You are constantly wanting to find yourself, find something new in the flow of life.

You also have a wife with whom you need to build a relationship. When someone else is there, doing that becomes almost impossible. It is very difficult. When I tell you to spend time on your own, to stop sharing a home with him and focus on being on your own in this phase of life, it is because you do not have the strength now to deal with such complex tasks, big, complex tasks. At the same time, you are absolutely right: when you live together, it cannot simply be a professional arrangement. A husband and wife live together and think that only a shared house or apartment connects their lives. They live that way for forty or fifty years and then die, never finding the ability to interact with each other in a genuinely broad way. They remain in this limited cocoon of interaction. If you are living alongside someone, you need to expand your interaction, try with every possible effort, rather than simply die together. Death is not frightening. Every relationship will end and die. Your life will end, will die. What is frightening is two people deteriorating in relation to one another. There is an important point you need to understand very clearly: two people can develop a relationship only when both want to do it.

You cannot be the one person endlessly trying to create and find some balance. The other person tells you, "I'm only interested in a professional relationship with you." He is mistaken. He does not understand how important you are to him right now. He does not understand how the time he spends with you will affect the coming decades of his life. He does not understand how it affects a fork in his life's path. But his life is predetermined; it will be without you. Then there is this old trail of your relationship, of knowing each other: walks together, leisure time together, joy, grief, judging other people together, staying overnight somewhere unpleasant, the euphoria of a win, a good mood and state, a certain playfulness. It brings back memories you want to lean on, but you cannot lean on them. That is the past. That is the past. What you can rely on is the person's current state, what he is truly expressing. He tells you that you have different views and approaches. Other people tell you that you have different interests: you are interested in personal development and want to find yourself. You say, "Yes, I want to find myself. Myself—that is who I want to find, because I feel bad."

"I am in this endless search." And he says, "I don't want to do that." On one hand, his development continues, but on the other, it has stopped. His development as a person, as a human being, as a spiritual being, has stopped. There will be different possibilities in his life for how things continue, what happens, what actions he takes. But you need to realize once again that people can interact only when both want to move toward it. You do not have the strength now to turn this other person's way of thinking around. That is important to remember. It does not mean you are bringing him grief. It does not mean you are bringing him pain. It does not mean you want to do something bad to him. It means you simply want to let him go and live his own free, normal life. Why don't you do it? Why don't you do it when I have been telling you to for a year, and you truly believe and trust my advice and want to hear it? Often, you do not have the strength to hear this advice. You do not have the strength to truly live through it and feel it. You do not have the strength to absorb it.

You do not have the strength to discuss it further at home, because you do not have the strength to discuss it with yourself. The main question is: why don't you do it? You do not do it because you are afraid, because you are afraid life will be hard without this person. It is not about him in particular anymore; he has become a kind of vague figure. Since childhood, you have become so used to being afraid, so used to thinking that people think only about themselves, that you want to lean on anything familiar from the past. Yet everything old is disappearing, constantly disappearing. A few things remain like flashes. Some people think they can manipulate you; some think they can influence you. But you are in a state where it will be very hard and difficult for people to do that from the outside. You need to act yourself now. This action depends only on you. It does not depend on the other person now. You need to understand that fear lives inside you. Importantly, this fear does not depend on that person. When the fear arises, you think it depends on him, but it does not. Every time we meet, I repeat that you need to live on your own so that he can have freedom in his actions, move into a real life, and you can follow your own path through life.

You are not destroying the relationship by doing this. You are moving it onto a calmer, more normal, simpler footing. You do not need to part ways or end anything. You simply need to keep moving forward, keep moving forward. Begin living separately. Give each other your own space, your own freedom. It may seem that more needs to be added or explained, but in fact you already have the answer. You received it the moment you were told, "Take a simple action: move into another home with your family. Stop sharing a home with this person." That action was already there. It does not need more explanation; no other actions are needed. The fundamental question is: why don't you—

Why don't you do it? Why don't other people do it? When you do not do it, it is important to look and calmly admit to yourself: first, you cannot do it. You simply cannot. Someone says, "Well, no, I think I can." You simply cannot. The second very important part is that you do not have the strength for it, the strength to make sense of what is happening. Make sense of it in what way? Understand that this action is true and was clear from the start. You do not need coaching, training, or psychotherapy for this. This action will automatically set in motion thousands of different events of another kind, an entirely different kind, that will help you follow your own path, strengthen and expand your life, bring it to a broader, completely different state, and give you the opportunity to develop on a large scale. This is very important: give you the opportunity to develop on a large scale, rather than deteriorate. When another person says he does not want to work through the relationship, it means he is not interested in you, not interested at all. Or he does not want your relationships to develop. He does not want to work through anything, does not want to do it, does not want to look at the truth for himself, and does not want to look at the truth for you.

He does not need the truth for you at all. All he needs is himself. Whatever you do with this person, you will only drive the nail deeper into yourself, because you want him to think differently and have different expectations. I recently made a video on this very subject: wanting the other person to have different expectations and think differently. At the same time, you feel your own lack of strength and drive the nail in even deeper. More precisely, this person is actually driving the nail into you, while you lose every capacity to show him love, compassion, and kindness. He takes so much of what little you have left that you simply do not have the strength for it. You say, "To hell with everyone. I'll think only about myself. I'll think about and take care of only myself." You begin showing the other side of insecurity and anxiety: aggressive ego. You start telling everyone, "Listen, show some respect." But they do not want to show respect. They do not need to. They want to feed off you; they do not want to show respect. You tell the person, "Show some respect."

He looks at you and does not understand what you mean. Again, you want him to change his mind and start acting differently. He says, "I don't want to act differently. I want to act exactly as I want, and only with regard to myself." I was about to say that the most important thing another person can do—and you in this case, and those of you watching—the best thing for your own development and growth is to look at how you treat and act toward other people, every person you encounter during the day. Where is the desire to gain something, take something, use another person, get something from them? What is remarkable is that I am answering someone's question in this video. He is sitting here asking it, and I can feel that he is glad we are recording this not only so that he can receive the answer, but because perhaps something will happen and the person we are discussing will watch it too. On one hand, this state brings a sense of being right: "Now you'll all find out how things should be." That is what I am sensing.

"I want to free myself from you." On the other hand, this state and feeling are not actually positive. It is a feeling you will want to reflect on this evening—in this case, you, the person who asked the question. Why did I feel that way toward him at that moment? Why did I want him to hear this? This will always arise in situations like these. There is no need to fear it. Most importantly, you must not reproach yourself for it under any circumstances. Do not reproach yourself for it under any circumstances. There are times when it is enough simply to observe and perceive it, to know it happened. Those reproaches are also egotism. Beating yourself up is also egotism in this case. You simply need to understand, "This is what I am doing now. I just didn't have the strength." You are doing it now. You simply did not have the strength. Just as I am telling you about it because I have the strength to tell you. I have the strength even to neutralize this state now, although it might seem quite metaphorical in relation to this video.

The very fact that the other person will watch it. About five minutes ago, when we began recording this video, I saw this state in you. I thought, "Oh, an interesting state. We'll talk about it now." From another angle: it simply appeared, and you feel it, and through a video like this you can communicate that position. But in reality, this is a state of untruth. So simply observe it. Many people watching this video will experience it too: taking someone's side or beginning to feel, "That's exactly what is happening to me!" When you reproach other people, it is only destruction, not growth. Each of us has people who bring up very difficult states in us. I once gave an example; it is a remarkable thing. I remember having a driver who drove me every morning and, of course, throughout the day. Every time I got into the car, I was not thinking about what a beautiful day it was, my upcoming meetings, projects, or work. Every morning when I got in, I thought about this driver, about how we did not connect.

In effect, I was bringing destruction to this person. It is the same as wanting to fire someone, wanting to, endlessly wanting to. You say, "I'd fire him, I'd fire him, I'd fire him." I know people who spend years firing one person instead of making one firm decision. The best thing you can do for that person in this case is simply to let him go quickly, free him to move on to a different life. You are holding him back. Everyone encounters people like this. These people and your interactions with them take an enormous piece of your life. I am not saying they are bad people. That is the whole point. The question is why this state arises in you. There are people you cannot give up on, must not give up on under any circumstances: children and parents. There are people with whom a relationship needs to end, and others with whom it needs to be reconsidered. People fear the death of relationships. They fear that the relationship will end. But notice that it will end in any case. First, there was a time when it did not exist in your life, and there will be a time when it ends, no matter what. Every relationship is guaranteed to end, just as ours will.

It will end in any case. All relationships will end: between all parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. Do not push the idea of death away from yourself or avoid it. It is a natural cycle of existence, an entirely natural cycle. Understanding this about relationships—that they are finite—directing energy toward it, and observing that energy bring tremendous growth to those relationships. They make it possible to make the right decision within those relationships, the true decision that is needed right now.